


Journey's End

by purple_cube



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2014-09-16
Packaged: 2018-02-17 16:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2316065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_cube/pseuds/purple_cube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johanna finds herself drifting back to Haymitch time and again. <br/>[Warnings: language, explicit sex, allusions to canonical torture and abuse]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Journey's End

**Author's Note:**

> For whiskeysnarker who tagged me in the Panem Prompt Challenge on Tumblr with the prompt Falling Slowly (by Glen Hansard).

 

 

The first time she fucks him is the day Krysta Thorn is crowned victor of the 72nd Hunger Games. Standing side by side, she reaches for his hand, only half-thinking it through – and by the time she’s done with the other half, his fingers are firmly tangled with hers. His skin is rough, and his touch cold, yet it’s the most comforted she’s felt for an entire year.

 

Since her own victory.

 

He lets her follow him to District 12’s floor of the Training Center, glancing over his shoulder only once, and only in amusement. Any humor in his eyes disintegrates, however, the moment that the door slides shut behind her back and she pulls him to her.

 

She isn’t gentle – but neither is he. He comes too soon, his loud groan against her shoulder conveying frustration amidst the relief. A sarcastic remark is on the tip of her tongue when he drops to his knees and presses his own between her legs.

 

After he makes her come, he apologizes – and she actually laughs. “What for?”

 

He shrugs. “Nothing. A lotta things,” he adds a moment later.

 

And then she sees the one thing she hates in his eyes – pity.

 

“I don’t want to hear it.”

 

She’s still tugging her clothes into place as the door slides open to let her leave.

 

*

 

She knows that she’s forgiven him by the time they meet again a year later. He knows it too, following her back to her living quarters without uttering a word. This time, they make it to the bed. This time, she rides him slowly and ensures that she finds her breaking point before he does.

 

This time, she doesn’t let him slip away from the observation room when his second tribute is killed. She pours him a drink, and then one for herself, and they silently toast the fallen children. Later, she wraps an arm across his chest and rests her head on his shoulder as he stares at the ceiling. And in the morning, he returns the favor when her own tribute dies.

 

When she knocks on his door on victory night, he gives her a wry smile and asks if this is now a tradition.

 

“Only if you can handle it, old man,” is her response.

 

She doesn’t give voice to any of the other dangerous thoughts whirling around in her mind. She doesn’t say that being with him numbs the pain in a way that nothing and no one else can.

 

She doesn’t say that she _wants_ this. And she certainly doesn’t say that she _needs_ this.

 

*

 

They don’t fuck the year that there is more than one victor.

 

“Did you plan it?” she asks when they’re alone.

 

He huffs humorlessly. “D’you think I’m that stupid?”

 

No, she doesn’t. He tells her that Seneca Crane is already dead and that he fears the two kids from 12 will be next.

 

“They won’t be,” she says with such conviction that he looks up in surprise. “There’s too much attention on them right now; Snow can’t touch them while the entire country is watching. As long as you keep them in the limelight, he can’t go anywhere near them.”

 

“And how do I do that?”  


“Give the audience what they want,” she says simply. “They want the love story, so just make sure it keeps going strong. For now, and then the victory tour, and then the next Games. As long as their romance is on people’s minds, they’ll be safe.”

 

It turns out that she’s right – for another year at least.

 

*

 

She stays away the following year, knowing that it’s too dangerous for any of the rebels to spend much time in each other’s company in the Capitol. What seems like a lifetime passes between the eve of the Quarter Quell and the next time she sees him. She kills again, and is almost killed herself. The wrong hovercraft looms over her as the arena shatters all around. And, it turns out, Snow finds yet another way to break her.

 

When it finally ends and nameless faces carry her through corridors and onto aircraft to District 13, she wonders if it was worth it.

 

This is also the first thing she asks him. He looks at her, long and hard, before he finally answers. “I don’t know.”

 

*

 

After, when Snow and Coin are gone and his tributes seem to be on their way out of this world too, she comforts him. She lets him cover her body with his and pepper her with increasingly desperate kisses. She lets him push into her, thrusting slowly and unsurely until she moves her hands to his hips to guide him. She lets him cry out against her throat as he comes, before grabbing his hand and directing his fingers until she finds her own release.  

 

When the Mockingjay is released and he tells her that he’s returning to 12, she asks him again. “Was it worth it?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

*

 

On what would have been the start of the 76th Games, he calls her. He tells her that 12 is being rebuilt, that his tributes are surviving – and so is he. When he tells her that he’s raising geese, she laughs loudly.

 

She visits. ( _To see the geese, of course_.)

 

She stays.

 

*

 

A baby – wrinkled and red and new to the world – struggles in her arms.

 

“Was it worth it?” he asks.

 

Her body and mind ache with an exhaustion that is entirely new, but his question alludes to so much more. Rebellion. Torture. War. Loss.

 

_Was it worth it?_

 

She looks down to meet big brown eyes that have never known such abject pain or fear or desperation. She dares to hope that they never will, in this new world that she’s helped to build.

 

“Yeah,” she whispers softly. “I think it was.”

 

 


End file.
